VENICE AROUND THE WORLD
When the man, about 100,000 years
ago, colonized the entire Africa, its expansion began to flood on the neighboring continents in a very short time
compared to the timing of evolution
and it has reached all areas of the
earth.
Over the past 80,000 years, man has
lived in every climate area of the globe,
demonstrating its ability to adapt,
colonizing unfavorable environments
apparently unsuitable to the needs of
mankind. One of these is water.
Of course, all civilizations based its
developed on the water resources of
the place, but some, for reasons of defense, access to resources or scarcity of
soils, have chosen to live on the water,
founding communities through settlements on floating stilts outside the
natural human element.
Even today we find in almost all latitudes a large number of sites based on
this type of housing, which over the
years have been more or less structured, taking temporary or permanent
character, as opposed to typological and technological solutions, while
maintaining their union with the water
to produce an urban landscape absolutely atypical.
nella pagina a fianco
Momento di aggregazione sociale a Ganvié, Benin.
Fotomontaggio
in the next page
Social life in Ganvié, Benin. Montage

Of these cases, the classic and certainly more complex example is Venice,
through its urban landscape and elaborate imagery that is built around it has
become the symbol of this human experience.
This is true to the point that in the
world we can find countless “Venice”,
with different degrees of authenticity
and more or less inspired by the original.
We can rediscover a category of Venice copied, referring to the imaginary
romantic and dramatic of the original,
such as the reconstruction of Venice in
Las Vegas, or the Venice district of Los
Angeles, where there is a brand version
and completely emptied of its sense,

in questa pagina
Mappatura delle Venezie nel mondo
inthis page
Mapping of Venices around the world

in line with a very common process of
visual form of a place that becomes
exportable and universal, but without
its system of social relations and needs,
thanks to which it has undertaken that
particular morphology.
Another category of “Venice” are all
those cities that have independently
developed similar urban technologies,
such as canals, bridges or pilings, but
who have found their declination and a
specific local identity.
Often identified as the Venice for... and
always trying to associate, for tourism, an imaginary product in one place
to another very different, these cities,
such as Amsterdam or many others in
northern Europe, have characteristics

own highly developed and structured
which would render more comparable
to the original Venice in terms of ways
of using the city or the original architectural significance.
A third category that can be grouped
some of these “cases urban” is what
you might call the becoming Venice,
which are all those villages located
mainly in equatorial and tropical and
built on stilts or floating platforms
which are the purest expression of life
on the water.
In most cases the villages on stilts are
confined to lagoon systems or river deltas that favor the local economy generally tied to the fishing
This is the type of town that most interests this thesis: their nature extremely
precarious and sometimes temporary,
coupled with their economic dependence on a very delicate ecosystems
makes it very vulnerable but at the
same time prepared to change.

BECOMING VENICE
The becoming Venice rise in lagoon
ecosystems often located in the tropics, which are the most delicate and
the first to feel the effects of climate
change.
The rising waters generates repercussions much more sensitive in coastal
areas where the level of the ground are
a little above the sea level, where the
changing of the tides and currents are
at the origin of the ecosystem.
The increase or decrease in rainfall affect directly these environments that
are related to river systems and draining basins.
Another factor that determines a big
issue for the local economy of the settlements on the water is that of the
growing water pollution.
Determined in part by pollution produced by the cities along the rivers
ahead and in part from the villages
themselves, which by their nature do
not “infrastructure” are not equipped
with collection systems and disposal of
waste and sewage systems, this degradation of the natural environment in
which they are immersed the “Venice”
causes an impoverishment in addition
to the economic decline in the level of
healthiness.
At this results normally follow migration and abandonment, or strong economic and morphological transformations.
The heritage value of these sites and
the need to preserve is undoubted but
their inclusion in the list of UNESCO
has provided greater visibility at the international level by transforming some
of these places in new tourist destinations.
In addition to the political and economic conditions of the countries in
which most of the settlements is analyzed, it is difficult that the requirements of protection of UNESCO can be
translated into effective action at the
local level, their ascription to the lists
of protection becomes hardly a danger
to the conservation of the architectural
heritage, culture and landscape.

In addition to this there is another factor that led to the increase of tourism
to places like this: in the last few years
we are witnessing an increasingly unrestrained search of alternative tourist
destinations and apparently remote.
Now the tourist market in general and
the new consumption trends are designed to provide “experiences” rather
than concrete products, has meant that
the reflection is very well develop on
the tourism of “adventure”.
The sites that are discussed here are
exactly the ideal target for this kind
of tourism and can easily be traced
back to a common imaginary of cities,
dream-like, suspended in the air, tied
to their traditions of the past, included
in a landscape in which it would be difficult to imagine a human settlement.
These tourist destinations also give the
feeling of achieving the original model
to which it refers all the imagery of
the classic “resort” with fake huts with
stilts over the water suspended crystalline imaginary for the new tourist strip
that requires more experience local and
informal experience.
The fact that the local economy of these
places is in itself already in crisis (as we
have already seen because of its very
nature precarious and climate change)
allows the tourist market to take root
very easily and quickly. This implies, as
in a vicious circle, the further loss of local identity and the gradual disappearance of traditional economies as well
as customs and traditions.
All of this is the phenomenon that such
settlements are not prepared to absorb
these new flows and all the infrastructure that they bring with them, necessary for the development of tourism.
The absence of zoning regulations and
the weakness of local governments allow easy game to speculation and illegal urbanization.

The utopian assumption that the protection of UNESCO could be effective,
however, there will be a crystallization
of these places whit a loss of traditional livelihoods, leaving an empty chrysalis, proof of the heritage of humanity.
Just think of what is happening in original Venice in which all the trends suggest a transformation to a model of a
city-museum.
There is no doubt that these “Venice
in the world”, in more or less close
together and in a more or less radical, will suffer in the coming years of
strong human and environmental pressures to be followed by equally important changes.
However, these phenomena, seen in a
certain point of view, can be taken as
the potential: the fact that these places
will experience episodes of urban development gives us the opportunity
to try to produce new models of cities
that are based on logic and dynamics
quite different if not opposite to those
usual.
Although the situation in which the
landscapes considered heritage are
subject to change unstoppable gives
us the opportunity to think about new
forms of capital protection, which can
be more flexible and adaptable to new
factors that are revealing, and may
contain the idea of ​​heritage “in becoming”, where not only protects the image
of a place but also its meaning and the
rules on which it is based and which
allowed him to exist.
And it is precisely on these points that
comes to our aid the study of the experience of Venice.

STRATEGIES
In similar environmental situations
placed in the West we have seen put
into play huge infrastructure to accommodate these issues.
These solutions are not conceivable for
the category of settlements examined
here, which are often located in countries that do not have the economic
capacity to implement them, or the
settlements themselves are not sufficiently large to justify these works of
defense.
The possible strategies to put in place
in these contexts must be based on a
development management that enhances the urban dynamics already
present in the area and the strong social dynamics that are an important
human heritage.
Development management can be entrusted to local authorities in the area
and close to the people who have the
ability to find solutions adapted to
individual contexts and can be easily
used by the population.
The growth of the energy sector can be
the key to the improvement of living
standards of the population and energy
sustainability means for economic and
political independence of local communities.
These energy policies are also essential to ensure access to basic services
to all residents, enhancing the dynamics already present in the area to cope
with the rapid changes in today’s settlements.
We are faced with the fact that this
particular settlement strategy over the
next 50 years will suffer strong changes anywhere in the world, primarily
because of environmental issues which
are being amplified by a number of factors such as human population growth,
new urban expansion and tourist flows.

THE CASSE STUDY OF GANVIE’ (BENIN)
The coastal area of ​​Benin, is composed
of a complex lagoon system in which
it has developed a number of villages
built entirely on stilts suspended in
the water. This has happened historically for defense from other tribes that
migrated to the coast from the region,
forcing local people to settle outside
the mainland.
These settlements have developed over
time of refined and delicate livelihood
systems linked to fishing activity, which
is based on a complex mechanism of
alternation of the salinity of the water
and on proliferation in certain periods
of the year of a particular plant that
serves as fish bait.
The main of these villages is Ganvié,
which has a population of 40,000 inhabitants, thus comparable to that of
the historical area of Venice, but unlike
it does not have a precise urban form
and are almost entirely absent those
physical devices that normally identify
a city.
Ganvie looks like a sort of sprawl, made​​
up of individual houses or gathered for
family groups, often adjacent to an island that seems to be the equivalent
of the private garden of the relevance
of the individual houses. These private
housing are inserted, or rather superimposed, to a public space boundless
compound from the surface of the sea.
Public life and all the urban dynamics
take place by boat, resulting in a doubling of functional levels in which at
the sea level we find the social relations and commercial functions related
to the economy and mobility.
At a higher level there are all private
homes and a few buildings of public
utility or of an institutional nature. The
entire village is composed so anamorphic according to the needs dictated by
fishing and depending altimetry water.
These factors become the guiding principles of urban development because
there isn’t, as in a classic western town,
infrastructure for mobility along which
can be developed in cities catalysts
around which thicken. All around the
village then develop facilities for fishing that show us how the whole landscape has changed by man although
not resulting odds with the natural environment.

in questa pagina
La struttura urbana di Ganvié e l’inserimento del
progetto
in this page
The urban structure of Ganvie and the inclusion of
the new structures

PROBLEMS
The particular urban structure of Ganvie is extremely vulnerable to the pressures of tourism that are leading on the
site a number of infrastructure (hotels,
restaurants, shops, etc. ...) that if not
planned properly and could compromise its particular morphology and ergonomics.
The rising waters will push the town to
the interior in search of the ideal dimensions for the construction on stilts
or produce an elevation of the same,
in addition to significantly affect the
equilibrium of the lagoon, which as we
have seen is based on a gentle circulation of saline water and sweets, consequently compromising the fishing

in questa pagina
Fotopiano di Ganvié e la sovrapposizione dei nuovi
insediamenti
nella pagina seguente
Pianta e sezione di una porzione delle nuove
strutture
in this page
Ganvié aerial view and overlapping of the new
settlements
in the next page
Plan and section of a part of the new buildings

capacity of the local population.
Global warming is also producing inside the lagoon which is located in the
village, a massive proliferation of some
species of algae that further compromise the habitat of the local fish.
Finally, the strong increase in tourism
and the resulting increase in infrastructure, leads the economy of this village
to slip by a system of subsistence and
local trade one related to tourism and
its allied industries.
This may be an opportunity to improve
the survivability of the settlement.

SOLUTIONS
The project is organized around an extensive structure of services and infrastructure which give to all the existing
and future settlements the basic services that an urban environment can offer.
The distribution of electricity will improve the quality of life of the inhabitants and the security of the settlements.
Taking advantage of the proliferation
of algae, it’s possible to install energy
production systems based on the combustion of bio-gas from the fermentation.
The implants are composed of extensive crops of macro algae, wooden
platforms storage and drying of the
same, a structure of anaerobic digestion that transforms for fermentation
algae into gas which is then stored in
tanks that feed the generators.
Assuming the appropriate incentive
systems, we can imagine that the local
population is concerned with the collection thanks to the transformation of
the salt marshes by fishery cultivation
of algae and their transportation to energy production plants.
This system allows therefore a renewable source of energy which produces
around him a sense of community and
a set of social relations generated by its
collective management.

Energy independence could then lead
to the economic capacity to introduce
some of the devices that increase the
resilience of cities to climate change
and positively absorb new “global”
pressures.
The creation of a sewer system will
make the lagoon system more healthy,
reducing the risk of disease and pollution, as well as damaging the ecosystem, which it is dangerous for the
people who live and feed in this environment.

in questa pagina
Vista delle coltivazioni di alghe. Sullo sfondo il
nuovo insediamento
nella pagina seguente
Quantificazione della produzione energetica
ottenuta dalle alghe
in this page
View of the cultivation of algae. In the background
a new settlement
in the next page
Quantification of energy production obtained from
algae

The scenario presented here can imagine how the city could equip themselves with systems of public mobility
by sea that put in communication with
the major cities along the coast (and
therefore with airports, train stations
and motorway networks).
The introduction of squares and floating public spaces could generate
greater complexity urban inserting a
new space between the water and the
housing.
The inclusion of an intermediate level
between public and private becomes a
sort of glue that connects the different
urban environments settlements.
These sites are designed as new poles
around which organizes the urban fabric and regulating the measure of expansion of future settlement.
Took note of the increasing population
and tourism affecting this area and the
need for the creation of housing, the
project proposes a partial regularization of settlements reinforcing the traditional structure.
The new structures composed of multiple levels are designed as incubators or
containers of services within the modular structure is space of expression of
spontaneity and stratification typical
of these realities and their heritage.
The shape of the structure is not so
predetermined but adapts and evolves
according to the needs of the population.
As the inhabitants, even the tourists are
welcomed into these structures, avoiding the impact of neighboring tourist
centers and making direct contact with
visitors to the logic of the town.
The introduction of markets covered
floats accessible by pathways could
then lead to hybridize tourism to the
local economy.
These are just some of the devices that
we can imagine that arise in the area:
the systems will produce micro-economies, new fabrics relational, becoming
new catalysts for urban development
and increasing complexity.

in questa pagina
Vista dalla canoa: I nuovi edifici e il loro rapporto
con l’acqua
in this page
View from the canoe: The new buildings and their
relationship with water

CONTRUCTIVE SOLUTION
The project proposes a constructive
system that revises the local architecture on stilts.
This choice is due to the availability
of wood materials on site at low cost
and the ease of learning the new technique by the local population that can
be considered self-sufficient for the
construction and maintenance of new
structures.
The stilts are designed from a modular
structure composed of wood tree vertical trunks and two-dimensional truss
which house inside them the electricity distribution network and waste disposal.
The assembly of these modules comprises one large space grid structure on
several levels.
The distribution into different floors, as
well as saving space and the environmental impact of the settlements, can
give way to public functions such as
shops and cultural spaces and private
homes.

Construction system on stilts and wooden lattice of
consolidation.

30

31

nella pagina precedente
Piante parziali delle nuove strutture
in questa pagina
Assonometria: mostra la stratificazione dei livelli a
partire dall’acqua
in this page
Partial plans of the new structures
in the previuos page
Isometric view: shows the layering of levels
starting from the water

This solution protects the privacy and
security of the inhabitants, however,
encouraging public life and the sense
of community typical of the African
style of life.
The set of two modules composes a sequence of two parts of housing separated by a connection space.
In this space in the double module are
placed the elements of horizontal and
vertical connection (such as walkways
and stairs) and equipment for the collection of rainwater essential for the
daily life of the inhabitants.
This space can also be absorbed from
the building and be used for the domestic plant.

33

in questa pagina
Vista dallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;interno del complesso: area di mercato
in this page
View from inside the complex: market area

34

35

in questa pagina
Vista da sott’acqua: le nuove sstrutture e il loro
rapporto con la laguna
in this page
View from underwater: the new structures and
their relationship with the lagoon

CONCLUDING
In this scenario, you do not want to
propose a rigid planning of a specific place, but we try to illustrate
how through an attitude disillusioned
with the possibility to maintain effective perfectly intact this kind of urban
landscapes, this could turn into an opportunity to produce new landscapes
assets in future, based on the potential
provided by new mechanisms of the
globalized world. The attempt is also to
be able to move from a planning and
design exporting finished products, to
providing input and tools for self-development and spontaneous that is the
only way to create places, understood
in the broadest sense, ie more or less
physical space where some of the relational networks.
The spontaneity and partial design become the focus of this work, imagining
that this kind of behavior can produce
interesting results, not only from the
formal point of view, but mainly for
their ease of declination.
Trigger processes rather than exporting
products has the advantage of providing solutions that are perfectly adaptable to the contexts and issues.
The focus then moves from the project
to the mechanism, making spontaneity,
irregularity a fundamental value, which
is not only an expression of a specific
culture but reflects a potentially positive attitude to solve many problems.
Nowadays the planning and design
have difficulty in taking into account
all the new trends and changes that
occur in the area. Is therefore more effective drawing attitudes, that cover
inside specific solutions even very different from each other, in such a way
as to try to regulate the processes of a
general nature. Thereby influencing the
whole series of subprocesses that compose them, up to the network of social
relations.